


How Donna Got a Key

by Kittywitch



Series: Three Fics One Line Challenge [3]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alcohol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 17:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3258464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittywitch/pseuds/Kittywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the final instalment of the "Three Fics One Line Challenge", the Doctor and picks up the old habit of calling his friends by each other's names.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Donna Got a Key

**Author's Note:**

> I'm quite aware that Donna's key was canonically given to her in The Sontarion Experiment/The Poison Sky, so either this is an alternate timeline or they were just too drunk to remember this conversation.

            It took several tries to get the key into the keyhole, but after much shaking and scraping, the door opened and the owner of the ship gave a cry of triumph. The redheaded woman lifted her head groggily. She craned around the side, where she had slumped while he argued with the door.

            "Got it open, then?" Donna asked.

            "I am the master of all space and time. There is not a door in the universe I cannot open, given sufficient time. And this one-" he tapped on the doorframe- "Happens to belong to me."

            He drew himself, somewhat shakily, to his full height, and entered.

            "Here I am king, and this is my cas-" the walkway shifted under his weight and the gangly alien dropped onto it.

           

            The two companions collapsed against the railing of the walkway, each partially supported by the other. Donna nudged the thin man sharply in the side, forcing him to slump forward at an uncomfortable angle. He didn't right himself, but rather blinked as he tried to understand how he got into that position. Reaching the inevitable conclusion Donna had pushed him, he thought really hard about turning his head towards her, but decided that having his chin supported by a bar was weirdly comfortable.

            "What was that about?"

            "I don't need a blubbery drunk alien clinging onto me, thank you."

            "Clinging?"

            "First you get loud, then you get clingy. Louder, and clingier."

            "I'm not loud. I'm not clingy. We-ell, I _am_ loud at that but I'm not clingy." At first he sounded like he was going to laugh, but then his voice broke in a funny way.

            "Not clingy." he repeated resolutely. "I can let go, you know. I do. I let go all the time. ...my life is just one long series of letting go..." The Doctor stared thoughtfully into the bowels of the ship.

            "...I miss Rose." he muttered sadly.

            "This happens every time you drink, I told you..."

            "I don't drink. You've never seen me drunk."

            "Right, you don't drink. And you don't get loud, then you don't get clingy, and then you don't start blubbering about first Rose and then Gallifriey."

            "...Gallifriey." he mused wistfully. "Oh, did I ever tell you about the sunrise over the citadel? Oh, it was a beautiful sight, Alistair-"

            "Still Donna."

            "-with all the orange and violet and indigo-"

            "It sounds like Picasso vomited on something."

            "You know, I actually saw Picasso vomit once, and let me tell you, it looked nothing like-" he trailed off, looking vaguely green.

            "...oh sweet Rassilion..." his head dropped, clearly attempting to go in between his knees but still propped up by the rail. The swaying of his own tie disturbed him and he screwed his eyes shut.

            "...but of course, you aren't drunk."

            The Doctor made to look at her but didn't manage to actually lift his head.

            "I'm not drunk, Peri, _you_ are drunk." he protested.

            "Up here, alien boy." Donna responded, adjusting the Doctor's line of sight. Eye contact seemed to surprise him.

            "Donna! What a pleasant surprise, have you met-"

            Donna's expression went totally flat. This had been a jolly little joke for long enough, and she had all she could take of it.

            She held out her hand to him.

            "Alright, spaceman, give me the keys."

            "What?" he asked.

            "You can't fly this crate sober, you think I'm gonna let you go around when you can't tell one pair of tits from another."

            "That's not fair--"

            "Well, I want to live. There's no D.U.I.s in space, only shrapnel, you get my point?"

            "You can't fly the TARDIS." he argued.

            "Yea, but unlike you, I wouldn't try. Keys."

            "The TARDIS doesn't have keys. I mean, it has keys, but those are like house keys, I don't need them to fly the ship, we-ell, I do need them because I need to be in the ship to fly it, but aside from that..." she was still staring flatly at him. "...you want them."

            "Yea." she said.

            "Well." he responded. "Here's _my_ key. My personal key as proof of my word." He held it out in one hand and put the other over his left heart. He looked at the key in his hand, then placed that over his right.

            "I swear as a timelord that I will _not_ fly off until you think I'm fit to do so. My word is my bond and my bond is... slightly nauseous."

            Donna took the key and turned it in her hand.

            "...this doesn't look like a key at all, it looks like some sort of gaudy earring..."

            "Oi, you mind not knocking the key?" he protested. "This is a big moment and it's hard enough with me trying not to be sick all over the place."

            "You go and be sick, for all I care." she leaned back and stretched out in the middle of the catwalk. "I'm gonna go to sleep. ...right here..." The Doctor watched her doze for a moment.

            "One of us is a bad influence on the other." he mused.

            "We both are. That's what friends are for, yeah?"

            "Yeah." he chuckled. The timelord stretched out his arms and leaned back like she had, but didn't close his eyes. He stared up at the twisted workings of his ship, pipes and lines crisscrossing further than the eye could see and blocking out the sight of one another, like tree branches.

            "That's what friends are for." he repeated.


End file.
